Alternative browsers go head to head

MICROSOFT INTERNET Explorer (IE) 6.0 which was released back in August 2002 has not changed for the past year or so except for the frequent updates and patches. IE 5.5 was launched back in December 2000 and IE 5, in March 1999 with Windows 98SE. While Microsoft's browser has been tagged as slow, buggy, unstable and what not, its family still apparently accounts for more than 94% of the global share of browsers leaving Opera and the others with around five per cent or so.

This mini-review looks at one of the best IE add-on browsers available, MyIE2, as well as Opera 7.32 which, even with 6.2 millions users, is steadily losing ground to Mozilla. MyIE2 is my current browser and is in its 0.9.16 version. A more recent one is available though, and updates come every two weeks or so. Before it, I used Netcaptor, now freeware again, Crazybrowser, which has not been updated for the last two years.

It was partly because of the INQ that I had to look for a tab-based browser. Indeed, the launch of theinquirer.net three years ago forced me to stop "shift-clicking" on links in Internet Explorer in order to make them pop up. It ended up consuming too many resources and crashed my PC so many times. Tabs are the most impressive aspect of the post-IE6 era and they literally introduced two-hand browsing.

MyIE2
MyIE2 was launched back in July 2002 as a multi tabbed browser and has since been downloaded over 2.3 millions times. It is available in 3 different versions with UCMore and Roboform or without them. MyIE2, unlike Opera tabbed windows, allows you to navigate amongst browser windows using F2 (to the left) and F3 (to the right) buttons. Quite handy when you open quite a lot of pages at once. You can assign aliases to your favorite pages. For example, typing "t" in my address bar will bring up the inquirer.net, "g" will bring up google etc. This makes your browsing experience a lot more convenient. Even opening links in new windows could not be easier. Just drag and drop, if you don't want to shift-click. The pages will seamlessly open in the background.

After installation, it lodges itself in the system tray ready to operate. Other features include (i) ROBOForm which is an intelligent form filler and password manager (ii) UCMore which is a search accelerator (iii) the ability to launch external software with a simple click (iv) mouse gestures, introduced with Opera some times back (v) a flotable notepad like collector which has tabs and is permanent, that is, notes written stay there even if MyIE2 is closed. It can also be used to run codes and scripts (vi) little known webmaster friendly tools like a Flash saving option, a goto root button, enable right mouse click and view source, a real treat! (vii) ad-hunter which is an effective means of blocking any kind of ads (viii) Quick services like Alexa, Anonymiser, Babelfish and Worldlingo translation and whois, absolutely essential for the more advanced internet users (ix) a truly multimedia browser with chat, instant messager and a multimedia player integrated right in the browser. Moreover, MyIE2 keeps the MHT saving format of Internet Explorer and improves on its bookmarks management.

Another area where MyIE2 is quite strong is community-support. Its forums sport a healthy 58,000 posts since its inception and more than 300 plugins are available for MyIE2 alone. In addition, MyIE2 is compatible with IE Toolbars which means that Google toolbar or Alexa can be easily integrated. There is still loads to be said about MyIE2.

Opera
Opera is a much larger venture, launched in 1994 with the first released browser, Opera 2.1, back in 1997. Until some years back, Opera was nicknamed the browser-on-a-floppy but has since taken on weight. It is available on a wide range of platform from mobiles - like the P900 - to Linux and is of course much heavier than MyIE2 since it is a fully fledged internet browser. One feature that was unique to Opera is the use of Mouse Gestures. Moving your mouse from left to right for example causes the window to open the last page in History. Other such tricks exist but you'll have to learn them.

Other interesting features of Opera are its ability to change its skins, applying user-defined style sheets (for example, retro SS will transform your browser into a C64 8-bit emulation - pretty impressive), and a side bar which federates all favourite functions into a handy dashboard. It is not a floating one as Opera might suggest. Two interesting features that also made it in the list are the WAND password manager which ressembles MyIE2 ROBOFORM software though much less advanced and a side notepad not unlike MyIE2 collector but again less impressive.

From a subjective point of view, MyIE2 perfectly fits the bill. It is complete, stable, easy on resources and a very intelligent piece of software with loads of options. On the other hand, it takes some time for the newbie to get hold of it and some functions like single-button saving (present in crazybrowser) and better printing options might be welcome. It is not perfect, but damn close to it. On the other hand, Opera seems to be faster and encompasses everything to make the average John Doe happy: browser, email, pop up blocker, download manager and newsgroup reader... Opera still has its quirks though as it seems to be less geeky than I would wish it to be and since it is Opera, might encounter slight problems with IE-enhanced websites.

The bottom line lies in the eye of the end-user. Most people like my girlfriend will continue using Internet Explorer whatever you might tell them. A much smaller proportion will choose to add a little something such as CrazyBrowser, Netcaptor or MyIE2 to make life better. A similar proportion will choose to sleep with the enemy and go to Opera which is not open sourced by the way and the last batch will go to OSS land to download Mozilla, Firefox and the like.

With 29 MB of memory usage, a 10% CPU usage and ten Windows opened right now, MyIE2 as well as Opera are quite slim. For your information, I am running both browsers at the same time on a Dell Optiplex GX1 machine (P2-400 and 128Mb RAM) running Windows 2000. Also worthy to look at will be the reaction of Microsoft which has already announced that Internet Explorer will no longer be available as a stand alone product, thereby leaving the race to older versions of IE and to the rest of the competition.

L'INQS
MyIE2 website
MyIE2 plugins collections
Opera website
MyIE2 skins
Opera Community